Portable music players, such as MP3 and CD players, have developed to the extent that consumers increasingly expect to be able to listen to the particular music they enjoy wherever they are. Yet, it is difficult for the consumer to have customizable music in their car or other vehicle.
One approach has been to adapt portable music players for vehicular use, either as external plug-in devices or built-in devices. External plug-in devices use a portable music player wired into the vehicular sound system. This requires additional wiring for a jack and may even require modification of the vehicle's wiring system. The amateur electrician can inflict damage on the wiring during the modification and incur expensive repairs. Operation of the devices can distract the driver from the road. Built-in devices, such as CD players, are limited by the medium played.
The media available are a major limitation to customizable music. Music is stored in one of a number of audio formats on a CD, a hard drive, or solid-state memory. The consumer typically selects an audio format compatible with their device and prepares or “burns” the music onto the desired media. The burning process is complicated, time consuming, and requires a computer. The consumer is limited to songs within their personal library and by the constraints of copyright law. The songs can be played in order or randomly, but cannot be automatically played at a desired frequency. Another problem is the quality of the music: audio formats normally compress the music to increase the number of songs that can be stored in a given amount of memory, reducing the audio quality on playback.
One solution to improve music quality has been satellite radio, which provides a high-quality, digital music signal from a satellite to a vehicle. Although the music quality is excellent, the programming is not customizable to the particular user. The programming is selected by the radio station. At best, the radio station plays a particular type of music or music selections selected by the listeners.
It would be desirable to have a method and system for customized music delivery to a mobile vehicle that overcomes the above disadvantages.